Some iPhone 18 Pro owners report speaker crackling, and Apple has not acknowledged itSome iPhone 18 Pro owners report speaker crackling, and Apple has not acknowledged it

Some owners of the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max are reporting a crackling or popping sound from the phone's speaker, in complaints Apple has not acknowledged.

The reports surfaced on the MacRumors forums and on Reddit, and MacRumors gathered them on 29 September. Owners describe the sound variously as a crackle, a faint tick, a pop or a random click. Most say it comes from the earpiece speaker at the top of the phone, though one owner quoted by 9to5Mac hears it from the upper or lower speaker and compares it to an audio cable being pulled from a socket. Both sizes of the Pro appear in the reports.

The circumstances vary. Some owners hear it constantly. Others hear it when switching or using apps, scrolling a web page, receiving a notification, bringing up the keyboard, adjusting the volume, dictating, or making a call over a cellular connection. MacRumors says that on affected units, turning Airplane Mode on and off, or changing the screen brightness quickly, appears to trigger it.

Has Apple fixed it?

No, and it has not said there is anything to fix. Apple released iOS 27.0.1 on 28 September, and as we reported, its release notes named the Face ID restart and two other faults. A speaker fault was not among them, and MacRumors says early feedback from owners is that the update made no difference.

The one account of an Apple Store visit points the same way. The owner quoted by 9to5Mac says staff attached a diagnostic device to the speaker, could not detect the fault even with the owner's own recordings to hand, and told them they were the first customer to bring it in. The suggested next step was a full restore from a Mac in the store. MacRumors also cites owners who returned a phone and received a replacement with the same sound.

How many phones are affected?

Nobody outside Apple knows. 9to5Mac's assessment is that there are enough reports to suggest a real issue, and few enough to suggest it is not widespread. Its writer has not heard it on their own phone. Neither outlet has reproduced the sound on a test unit, and neither cites Apple.

Our take

This is an early-stage report, and it should be read as one. Forum threads collect people who have a problem, not the far larger number who do not, so they say nothing reliable about how common a fault is. What they do say is that the symptom is consistent enough to be described the same way by strangers, and that is usually where a real fault starts. It is also where plenty of non-faults start: a new phone held to the ear is listened to more closely than an old one.

The triggers are the interesting part. Airplane Mode, a cellular call and a brightness change are all moments when the phone's power and radio state shifts abruptly, and an audible tick at those moments is a familiar class of problem in electronics generally. That points towards something Apple could adjust in software, which is the hopeful reading MacRumors also offers. The replacement units with the same sound point the other way, or at least suggest it is not one bad batch. Both readings are speculation until Apple says something, and we are labelling them as such.

There is a pattern to how the last iPhone 18 Pro fault went. A failed Face ID scan freezing and rebooting some units began as owner reports too, and Apple confirmed a fix was coming within days. APPDOOK's reading is that the speaker reports are some way short of that stage: no acknowledgement, no reproduction by a reviewer, and an Apple Store that could not hear it. Anyone affected who is still inside the return window has the strongest position now. Everyone else is waiting, as we are, for either a line in a future release note or a support document.